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FROM WHITE HOUSE 



To 



LOG CABIN 



Compiled by 
LOUIS A. WARREN 



ROOSEVELT, TAFT AND WILSON, 
At The Birth Place of 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



FROM WHITE HOUSE 



To 



LOG CABIN 



Compiled by 

LOUIS A. WARREN 



ROOSEVELT, TAFT AND WILSON, 
At The Birth Place of 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



Copyright 1921 
LOUIS A. WARREN 



©CLA624669 



ShP 12 1921 



.8 






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PREFACE. 



The Lincoln Farm Association which was responsible for 
the development of the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln at Hod- 
genville, Kentucky, brought to the historic spot during the 
period it managed and carried to completion the project, three 
president of the United States. 

The purpose of this publication is to present under one 
cover the addresses delivered by these three visiting presidents; 
Roosevelt Taft, and Wilson. The occasions, so much alike in 
purpose, although occurring at periods in three administrations, 
called from the speakers remarks of much the same character; 
which fact will allow the reader to judge in what esteem the 
Emancipator was held by the Progressive, the Republican and the 
Democratic leader mentioned above. 

Those interested in the literary ability of these men of 
letters will find in these three orations of about the same length 
an opportunity to compare addresses delivered in the same en- 
vironment and resulting from a common source of inspiration. 

No attempt is made by the author in the introductory re- 
marks preceeding each article, to give other than the immediate 
data necessary to acquaint the reader with the program of the 
occasion under which the address was delivered. For illustrated 
description of the Lincoln National Park, see book under afore- 
said caption by the same author, and printed by the same pub- 
lisher as the volumn in hand. 

Hodgenville, Ky. LOUIS A. WARREN. 



CORNER STONE CEREMONIES 

With Address by 
Theredore Roosevelt. 



The corner stone of the Memorial Building erected at 
the birth-place of Abraham Lincoln was laid at a celebration on 
February 12, 1909, in commemoration of the one hundredth anni- 
versary of Lincoln's birth. The program of the occasion was as 
follows: 

Invocation — E. L. Powell, Minister First Christian Church, 

Louisville, Ky. 
Address on behalf of the United States of America — 

President Theodore Roosevelt. 
Address on behalf of the State of Kentucky — Governor 

Augustus Wilson. 
Address on behalf of Lincoln Farm Association — Governor 

Joseph Folk President of Association. 
Address on behalf of Federal Army — General James 

Grant Wilson. 
Address on behalf of Confederate Army — General Luke 

E. Wright. 
Documents deposited in Corner Stone — Copy of Emanci- 
pation Proclamation, I. T. Montgomery, ex-slave; Coins of che 
day, Clarence H. Mackay, Treas. of Lincoln Farm Association; 
History of Lincoln Farm Association, Richard Lloyd Jones, Sec- 
retary of Association; Copy of LaRue County Herald Feb. 11, 
1909, Robert J. Collier, V-President of Association; Silk Ameri- 
can Flag, President Thecdore Roosevelt. 

THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH. 

We have met here to celebrate the 100th anni- 
versary of the birth of one of the two great Ameri- 
cans; of one of the two or three greatest men of the 
Nineteenth century; of one of the greatest men in 
the world's history. This rail splitter, this boy who 
passed his ungainly youth in the dire poverty of the 



poorest of the frontier folk, whose rise Avas by weary 
and painful labor, lived to lead his people through 
the burning flames of a struggle from which the na- 
tion emerged purified as by fire, born anew to a 
loftier life. After long years of iron effort and 
of failure that came more often than victory, he at 
last rose to the leadership of the republic, at the mo- 
ment when that leadership had become the stupen- 
dous world- task of the time. He grew to know great- 
ness, but never happiness, save that which springs 
from doing well a painful and a vital task. Power 
was his, but not pleasure. The furrows deepened on 
his brow, but his eyes were undimmed by either 
hate of fear. His gaunt shoulders were bowed, but 
his steel sinews never faltered as he bore for a bur- 
den the destinies of his people. His great and ten- 
der heart shrank from giving pain; and the task al- 
lotted him was to pour out like water the life blond 
of the young men, and to feel in his every fiber the 
sorrow of the women. Disaster saddened but never 
dismayed him. As the red years went by they found 
him ever doing his duty in the present, ever facing 
the future with fearless front, high of heart and 
dauntless of soul. Unbroken by hatred, unshaken by 
scorn, he worked and suffered for the people. 
Triumph was his at the last, and barely had he 
tasted it before murder found him, and the kindly 
pationt, fearless eyes were closed forever. 

As a people Ave are indeed beyond measure for- 
tunate in the characters of the two greatest of our 
public men, Washington and Lincoln. Widely tlio 
they differed in externals, the Virginia landed gen- 
tleman and the Kentucky backwoodsman, they were 
alike in essentials, they were alike in the great quali- 
fies which rendered each able to render seiwice to 



his nation and to all mankind such as no other man 
of his generation could or did render. Each had 
lofty ideals, but each in striving to attain these lofty 
ideals was guided by the soundest common sen^e. 
Each possessed inflexible courage in adversity, ar>d 
a soul wholly unspoiled by prosperity. Each pos- 
sessed all the gentle virtues commonly exhibited by 
good men who lack rugged strength of character. 
Each possessed also all the strong qualities com- 
monly exhibited b} r those towering masters of man- 
kind who have too often shown themselves devoid 
of so much as the understanding of the words by 
which we signify the qualities of duty, of mercy, of 
devotion to the right, of lofty disinterestedness in 
battling for the good of others. There have been 
other men as great and other men as good; but in all 
the history of mankind there are no other two good 
men as great. Widely though the problems of today 
differ from the problems set for solution to Wash- 
ington when he founded this nation, to Lincoln when 
he saved it and freed the slave, yet the qualities they 
showed in meeting these problems are exactly the 
same as those we should show in doing our work to- 
lay. 

Lincoln saw into the future with the prophetic 
imagination usually vouchsafed only to the poet and 
the seer. He had in him all the lift toward great- 
ness of the visionary, without any of the visionary's 
fanaticism or egotism, without any of the visionary's 
narrow jealousy of the practical man and inability to 
strive in practical fashion for the realization of an 
ideal. He had the practical man's hard common 
sense and willingness to adapt means to ends; bul 
there was in him none of that morbid growth of mind 
and soul which binds so many practical men to the 



higher things of life. No more practical man ever 
lived than this homely backwoods idealist; but he 
had nothing in common with those practical men 
whose consciences are warped until they fail to dis- 
tinguish between good and evil, fail to understand 
that strength, ability, shrewdness, whether in the 
world of business or of politics, only serve to make 
their possessor a more noxious,, a more evil member 
of the community, if they are not guided and con- 
trolled by a fine and high moral sense. 

We of this day must try to solve many social 
and industrial problems, requiring to an especial de- 
gree the combination of indomitable resolution with 
cool-headed sanity. We can profit by the way in 
which Lincoln used both these traits as he strove for 
reform. We can learn much of value from the very 
attacks which following that course brought up mi 
his head attacks alike by the extremists of reaction. 
He never wavered in devotion to his principles, in 
his love for the Union, and in his abhorrence of slav- 
ery. Timid and lukewarm people were always de- 
nouncing him because he was too extreme; but, as a 
matter of fact, he never went to extremes, he worked 
step by step; and because of this the extremists 
hated and denounced him with a fervor which new 
seems to us fantastic in its deification of the unreal 
and the impossible. At the very time when one side 
was holding him up as the apostle of social revolu- 
tion because he was against slavery, the leading abo- 
litionist denounced him as the " slave hound of Illi- 
nois," When he was the second time candidate for 
President the maority of his opponents attacked him 
because of what they termed his extreme radicalism, 
while a minority threatened to bolt his nomination 
because he was not radical enough. He had con- 



tinually to check those who wished to go forward 
too fast, at the very time that he overrode the oppo- 
sition of those who wished not to go forward at all. 
The goal was never dim before his vision; but he 
picked his way cautiously, without either halt or 
hurry, as he strode toward it, through such a morass 
of difficulty that no man of less courage would have 
attempted it, while it would surely have overwhelm- 
ed any man of judgment less serene. 

Yet perhaps the most vitally important was 
the extraordinary way in which Lincoln could fight 
valiantly against what he deemed wrong and yet 
preserve undiminished his love and respect for the 
brother with whom he differed. In the hour of a triumph 
that would have turned any weaker man's head, in 
the heat of a struggle which spurred many a good 
man to dreadful vindictiveness, he said truthfuUv 
that so long as he had been in his office he had never 
willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom, and 
besought his supporters to study the incidents of the 
trial through which they were passing as philosophy 
from which to learn wisdom and not as wrongs to be 
avenged; ending with the solemn exhortation that, 
as the strife was over, all should reunite in a common 
effort to save their common country. 

He lived in days that were great and terrible, 
when brother fought against brother for what each 
sincerely deemed to be the right, In a contest so 
grim the strong men who alone can carry it through 
are rarely able to do justice to the deep convictions 
of those with whom they grapple in mortal strife. At 
such time men see through a glass darkly; to only the 
?*arest and loftiest spirits is vouchsafed that clear 
vision which gradually comes to all, even to the 
lesser, as the struggle fades into distance, and wounds 



are forgotten and peace creeps back to the hearts 
that were hurt. But to Lincoln was given this su- 
preme vision. He did not hate the man from whom 
lie differed. Weakness was as foreign as wickedness 
to his strong, gentle nature; but his courage was of 
a quality so high that it needed no bolstering of dark 
passion. He saw clearly that the same high quali- 
ties, the same courage and willingness for self-sacri- 
fice, and devotion to the right as it was given them 
to see the right, belonged both to the men of the 
North and to the men of the South. 

The years roll by and as all of us wherever we 
dwell, grow to feel an equal pride in the valor and 
self -devotion alike of the men who wore the blue and 
the men who wore the gray, so this whole nation will 
grow to feel a peculiar sense of pride in the man 
whose blood was shed for the union of his pople and 
for the freedom of a race; the lover of his country 
and of all mankind; the mightiest of the mighty men 
who mastered the mighty day, Abraham Lincoln. 



DEDICATORY SERVICES 



With Address by 
William Howard Taft 



Upon the completion of the building* erected for the purpose 
of housing the cabin in which Lincoln was born, dedicatory ser- 
vices were arranged by the Lincoln Farm Association for No- 
vember 9th. 1911. The principle speakers for the occasion were: 

William Howard Taft— President of the United States. 

Joseph W. Folk — Ex-Governor of Missouri. 

Augustus E. Wilson — Governor of Kentucky. 

William A. Borah — Senator from Idaho. 

Gen. John C. Black— Washington, D. C. 

Henry Watterson — Louisville, Ky. 

The invocation was offered by Rabbi Enlow and the Bene- 
diction by Bishop Byrne. 

THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH. 

There is nothing so fascinating on the one hand 
and nothing so difficult on the other as tracing; by 
heredity the developments of genius and real 
greatness. Perhaps this isbecause thereare so few in- 
stances in history that prompt the search. The ex- 
planation of Lincoln and his wonderful character 
from his origin and environment is almost as diffi- 
cult as the explanation of Shakespeare; but the 
passion of the world grows for more intimate knowl- 
edge of his personality and a deeper inquiry into the 
circumstances of his wonderful life. 

"No year passes that something more is not 
written of him, and testimonials in loving mercy and 
interest increase. The nation itself, has yet to em- 
body in marble or bronze its widened appreciation of 



him as its savior. Nothing of his characteristics is 
too incidental for those who study over again his 
great speeches and messages and trace again the 
amazing story from the lowly home in Kentucky 
whence he sprang to the height of his glory in his 
martyrdom. 

"It is eminently appropriate that the farm 
where Lincoln was born should come into public 
possession and should have erected on it a suitable 
memorial in which to preserve mementoes of his per- 
sonality and biographies of his life. , 

"Few men have come into public prominence 
who came absolutely from the soil, as did Abraham 
Lincoln. It is difficult to imagine the lack of com- 
fort, accomodations, and the necessities of life 
that were in the cabin in which he was born. With 
an illiterate and shiftless father, and a mother, who, 
though of education and force, died before he reach- 
ed youth, his future was dark indeed. In the step- 
mother that his father formed for him, however, he 
had a woman with strength of character and education 
enough to assist him. He says he never received any 
education except reading and writing and arithmetic 
to the rule of three; but he had access to books, and, 
whether he kept a store or acted as a flatboatman on 
the Mississippi or finally came to study law, he read 
the books he had thoroughly and they included the 
Bible and Shakespeare. 

''One of his biographers who knew him well, 
says that after he had finished this small library, lie 
read some but he thought much more. He thought of 
what he read, and he exercised his intellect by con- 
stant practice till he made his logical processes an in- 
strument to search truth and analvze facts that 



lias rarely been equaled in anyone. The almost 
squalor in which he passed his early life, made him 
familiar with the sufferings, thoughts and sympa- 
thies of the plain people ; and when he came to great 
power, his understanding of their reasoning and of 
their views gave him an advantage in interpreting 
their attitude which cannot be overstated. He fol- 
lowed closely the popular judgment, but he did not 
yield to it, save when his reasoning faculties estab 
iished its correctness. 

"His evident sympathy for the colored race, his 
roused sense of justice in their behalf, his earnest 
passions to secure them freedom and equality of op- 
portunity, had their inspiration in the sufferings and 
limitations of his own early life. 

"He was not slow, but he was cautious, deliber- 
ate, attentive, as befitted one who insisted on estab- 
lishing every proposition that he adhered to by ori- 
ginal reasoning from fundamental postulates. The 
lucidity and clearness of his thought manifested it- 
self in the simplicity, directness and clearness of his 
style. He had imagination and he loved poetry. He 
had the rythm of languages, and though purely self- 
educated, these circumstances developed a power of 
literary expression that the world and especially the 
literary world has come fully to recognize and enjoy. 

"Humor he used in his conversation, stories of 
humor he told, as he said once, to enable him to 
deny requests or to express difference of opinion 
without abruptness and without hurting the feelings 
of his petitioner. But humor he rarely introduced 
into his carefully prepared speeches or his messages. 
A. serious aspect on the subject he was discussing 
and his intense earnestness in framing the reasons 



for his conclusions so as to impress its justice on the 
reader or the listener, prevented him from the use 
of wit or humor, though it was always at his com- 
mand. 

"He was a lawyer, and a good one. He studied 
his cases hard, and he prepared his arguments with 
the force and cleverness that might have been expec- 
ted from one of his mental makeup . His mind was 
luminous with truth. His conscience was governed by 
devotion to right, and the tenderness of his heart 
was only restrained by his intellect and his con- 
science. His determination to see both sides and 
reason out conflicting arguments to a satisfactory 
conclusion, made him tolerant and patient beyond 
conception. 

'The story of his dealings with McClellan, with 
die members of his Cabinet, and with others uncon- 
scious of the great genius and heart with whom they 
were in personal touch, exasperates the sympathetic 
reader and arouse a protest that vents itself in con- 
tempt toward many of those who surrounded him 
and yet did not measure the great nature they were 
privileged to know. The diary of his Cabinet of- 
ficers show how under his very nose and generally 
with his clear conception of it, political combina- 
tions were formed, only to be dissolved and fall 
harmless through the patient tact of this master of 
men, this greatest of diplomatists. 

"When he came to the Presidency he had only 
experience of two terms in the Legislature, of one 
term in Congress, of the political discussions and 
debates in the interior districts, and of the great de- 
bate with Douglas. He had no training at all in ad- 
ministrative matters, and when they were presented 
to him the awful task which the threatened secession 



of the Southern States presented he had to feel his 
way, 

' i Seward, having- been beaten by Lincoln by ac- 
cident as he conceived, and feeling himself fuch bet- 
ter qualified for the Presidency, did not hesitate to 
attempt to usurp Lincoln's function as President, by 
distributing patronage in various departments until 
that quiet, masterly but humorous way, Lincoln took 
the reins and held them to the end. With Seward, 
with Stanton, with Chase, he had his trials. Chase 
was a great lawyer, a sincere, courageous and con- 
sistent abolitionist, an astute politician with the 
highest ambition and with no delicacy or embarras- 
sing sense of loyalty that would prevent him from 
organizing a combination to defeat Mr. Lincoln's 
political purposes and to elect Mr. Chase. Stanton 
was a great, rough, able, administrator, but he was 
rugged and honest and effective, and Lincoln crossed 
him only when he had to and treated his excesses of 
impatience with that humorous tolerance that shows 
itself in so many stories of encounters between them 
With no knowledge of military strategy, he develop- 
ed out of his own study a clearness of perception and 
a common sense view of the needs of the army which 
makes his letters models of stragetic suggestion. 

"In the outset Mr. Lincoln encountered the dif- 
ficulties that fall to the lot of any responsible head 
of a Government; difficulties which are intensified 
by the greatness of the issues at hand, but which all 
have the same characteristics when they arise from 
the overzeal of moral reformers. Those who wished 
slavery abolished felt toward Mr. Lincoln a greater 
degree of hatred and contempt during the two years 
of his administration than even the rebels them- 
selves. Brooking no delay, accepting every excuse 



as a mere pretext, they pounced upon Mr. Lincoln 
with emphatic denunciation and bitter attack, but 
lie knew better than they what was necessary before 
he took the step of emancipation they were suppres- 
sing . 

' 'He knew better than they the loss of support he 
would suffer in the border States. He knew better 
than they that he must delay until the emancipation 
proclamation could be issued, not to break up slav- 
ery, but to effect a constitutional amendment, but 
only for military reasons and with military purposes 
and so he bared his breast to the shafts of criticism 
from the most important element of the Republican 
party and waited. No man in public life was ever 
so much abused as Lincoln. The contrast between 
his position in history today and the description of 
him by his friendly critics during the Civil War 
can hardly be credited. 

''The great reason for the present memorial is 
the constant reminder it furnishes of the unexplained 
and unexplainable growth and development, from 
the humblest and homeliest soil, of Lincoln's genius, 
intellect, heart and character that have commanded 
the gratitude of his countrymen for the good he 
worked with them and awakened the love and de- 
voted administration of a world." 



FORMAL ACCEPTANCE PROGRAM 



With Address by 
Woodrow Wilson 



On September 4th., 1916, The Lincoln Farm Association 
presented to the United States Government the farm on which 
Abraham Lincoln was born together with the beautiful granite 
structure containing the sacred cabin. The program follows* 

Invocation — Dr. Ganfield of Centre College. 

Address — Gen. John B. Castleman. 

Address — Gov. Joseph W. Folk. 

Address — Senator John Sharp Williams. 

Presentation of the Lincoln Birth-place Farm — Robert J. 
Collier. 

Acceptance on behalf of the United States of America — 
Newton D. Baker. 

Flag Raising Ceremonies. 

Address — President Woodrow Wilson. 

Benediction — Rev. Shahan. 

THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH. 

We would like to think of men like Lincoln and 
Washington as typical Americans, but no man can 
be typical who is so unusual as these great men were. 
It was typical of American life that it should pro- 
duce such men with supreme indifference as to the 
manner in which it produced them, and as readily 
here in this hut as amidst the little circle of cultiva- 
ted gentlemen to whom Virginia owed so much in 
leadership and example. And Lincoln and Wash- 
ington were typical Americans in the use they made 
of their genius. But there will be few such men at 
best, and we will not look into the mystery of how 
and w,hy they come. We will only keep the door 



open for them always, and a hearty welcome — after 
we have recognized them. 

I have read many biographies of Lincoln; I have 
sought out with the greatest interest the many inti- 
mate stories that are told of him, the naratives of 
nearby friends, the sketches at close quarters, in 
which those who had the privilege of being associa- 
ted with him have tried to depict for us the very man 
himself "in his habits as he lived;" but I have no- 
where found a real intimate of Lincoln's. I nowhere 
get the impression in any narrative or reminiscence 
that the writer had in fact penetrated to the heart 
of his mystery, or that any man could penetrate to 
the heart of it. That brooding spirit had no real fa- 
miliars. I ^gei the impression that it never spoke out 
in complete self-revelation, and that it could not re- 
veal itself completely to anyone. It was a very lonely 
spirit" that looked from underneath those shaggy 
brows and comprehended men without fully com- 
muning with them, as if, in spite of all its general 
efforts at comradeship, it dwelt apart, saw its visions 
of duty where no man looked on. There is a very 
holy and very terrible isolation for the conscience of 
every man who seeks to read the destiny in affairs 
for others as well as for himself, for a nation as well 
as for individuals. That privacy no man can in- 
trude upon. That lonely search of the spirit for 
the right perhaps no man can resist. This strange 
child of the cabin kept company with invisible things 
Avas born into no intimacy but that of its own silently 
assembling and deploying thoughts. 

I have come here today, not to utter an eulogy ?>n 
Lincoln; he stands in need of none, but to endeavor to 
interpret the meaning of this gift to the nation of 
the place of his birth and origin . Is not this an altar 



upon which we may forever keep alive the vestal fire 
of democracy as upon a shrine at which some of the 
deepest and most sacred hopes of mankind may from 
age to age be rekindled ? For these hopes must con 
stantly be rekindled, and only those who live can 
rekindle them. The only stuff that can retain the life- 
giving heat is the stuff of living hearts. And the 
hopes of mankind cannot be kept alive by words 
merely, by constitutions and doctrines of right and 
codes of liberality. The object of democracy is to 
transmute these into the life and action of society, 
the self-denial and self-sacrifice of heroic men and 
women willing to make their lives in embodiment of 
right and service and enlightened purpose. The com- 
mands of democracy are as imperative as its privi- 
leges and opportunities are wide and generous. Its 
compulsion is upon us. It will be great and lift a 
great light for the guidance of the nations only if we 
are great and carry that light high for the guidance 
of our own feet. We are not worthy to stand here 
unless we ourselves be in deed and in truth real dem- 
ocrats and servants of mankind, ready to give our 
very lives for the freedom and justice and spiritual 
exaltions of the great nation which shelters and 
nurtures us. 

No more significant memorial could have been 
presented to the nation than this. It expresses so 
much of what is singular and noteworthy in the 
history of the country; it suggests so many of the 
things that we prize most highly in our life and in 
our system of government. How eloquent this little 
house within this shrine is of the vigor of democracy! 
There is nowhere in the land any home so remote, 
so humble, that it may not contain the power of 
mind and heart and conscience to which nations 



yield and history submits its processes. Nature pays 
no tribute to aristocracy, subscribes to no creed or 
caste, renders fealty to no monarch or master of any 
name or kind. Genius is no snob. It does not run 
after titles or seek by preference the high circle of 
society. It affects humble company as well as great. 
It pays no special tribute to universities or learned 
societies or conventional standards of greatness, but 
serenely chooses its own comrades, its own hunts, Us 
own cradle even, and its own life of adventure and 
of training. Here is proof of it. This little hut was 
the cradle of one of the great sons of men, a man of 
singular, delightful, vital genius who recently emerg- 
ed upon the great stage of the nation's history, gaunt, 
shy, ungainly, but dominant and majestic, a natural 
ruler of men, himself inevitably the central picture 
of the great plot. No man can explain this, but every 
man can see how it demonstrates the vigor of demo- 
cracy, here every door is open, in every hamlet and 
countryside, in city and wilderness alike, for the 
ruler to emerge when he will and claim his leader 
ship in the free life. Such are the authentic proofs 
of the validity and vitality of democracy. 

Here, no less, hides the mystery of democracy. 
Who shall guess this secret of nature and providpnc 
and a free policy ! Whatever the vigor and vitality 
of the stock from which he sprang, its mere vigor 
and soundness do not explain where the man got his 
great heart that seemed to comprehend all mankind 
in its catholic and benignant sympathy, the mind 
that sat enthroned behind those brooding, melan- 
choly eyes, whose vision swept many a horizon which 
those about him dreamed not of — that mind that 
comprehended what it had never seen and under- 
stood the language of affairs with the ready ease of 



one to the manner born — of that nature which seem- 
ed in its varied richness to be the familiar of men of 
every way of life. This is the sacred mystery of 
democracy, that its richest fruits spring up out of 
soils which no man has prepared and in circumstan- 
ces amidst which they are the lest expected. This is 
a place of mystery and of reassurance. 

It is likely that in a society ordered otherwise 
than our own Lincoln could not have found himself 
or the path of fame and power upon which he walk- 
ed serenely to his death. In this place it is right that 
we should remind ourselves of the solid and striking- 
facts upon which our faith in democracy is founded. 
Many another man besides Lincoln has served the 
nation in its highest places of counsel and of action 
whose origins were as humble as his. Though the 
greatest example of the universal energy, richness, 
stimulation and force of democracy, he is only one 
example among man. The permeating and all-per- 
vasive virtue of the freedom which challenges us in 
America to make the most of every gift and power we 
possess every page of our history serves to empha- 
size and illustrate. Standing here in this place, it 
seems almost the whole of the stirring story. 

Here Lincoln had his beginnings. Here the end 
and consummation of that great life seem remote and 
a bit incredible. And yet there was no break anywhere 
between beginning and end, no lack of natural se- 
quence anywhere . Nothing really incredible happen- 
ed. Lincoln was unaffectedly as much at home in the 
White House as he was here. Do you share with me 
the feeling, I wonder, that he was permanently at 
home nowhere? It seems to me that in the case of a 
man — I would rather say of a spirit — like Lincoln 
the question where he was is of little significance, 



that it is always what he was that really arrests our 
thought and takes hold of our imagination. It is 
the spirit always that is soverign. Lincoln, like the 
rest of us, was put through the discipline of the world 
—a very rough and exacting discipline for him, an 
indispensable discipline for every man who would 
know what he is about in the midst of the world's af^ 
fairs; but his spirit got only its schooling there. Tt 
did not derive its character or its vision from the ex- 
periences which brought it to its full revelation. The 
test of every American must always be, not where he 
is, but what he is. That also is of the essence of dem 
ojracy, and is the moral of which this place is most 
gra vely expressive. 



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